Wednesday, September 02, 2009

Pleats

We're back. We had an ace weekend. I'd like to think that everyone had listened to the news on Friday and decided that going anywhere was a bad idea because I have never seen the motorways as clear as they were. We managed to find my friends house who, according to Lou, lives on a farm in the middle of NOWHERE. They spent the last 15 minutes of the journey asking me if we were lost, what would happen if we did get lost and various other helpful comments when you are driving down pitch-black lanes with a print-out from Google maps, counting tenths of a mile to work out when we turn down the next lane.

So we had fun, were on the beach in the wind and rain at 9am on Saturday morning with two energetic children who had been up since 6ish and two not so energetic not children who had maybe stayed up too late and drunk too much red wine. Unfortunately we didn't learn that night either so when we got home on Sunday night, I handed children to their Daddy and crawled into my bed.

This week has been manic. I've had lots of orders. Don't stop ordering, please don't, but you have caught me by surprise so I have been sewing like a mad girl. Today I have caught up though and even managed to start on the design of a new bag.

A while back I stopped making tote/hand/big knitting bags. People were buying them. Slowly. I didn't like the way they looked though and couldn't get good photos so they went after too many attempts at photos and me throwing bags at the window and going off for a sulk. This has been annoying me for ages because it is something that I want in my range, its also what I get asked about quite a lot. People generally ask if I have made my hand-bag then say that they want me to make them one so I sell quite a few off-line. On-line, its all about photos but I am ignoring that hurdle until I have made a bag then will talk nicely to my friend and hope we can sort something out.

So the bag? Well I went to bed last night and dreamt bags...sad but true. This morning I woke up with an idea but when I started thinking it through, I didn't know if it would work. Now I'm thinking maybe it will. It's going to feature pleats which I have never sewn in my life so that was a bit of a learning curve this morning while I had Lou asking me to do the voice of Swiper and Jack complaining that he could only draw stick people.

Right, that was just practise material. Now I'm onto version #2 with nice material and this is going to be *bright*